Cryptocurrency exchange Huobi is investing 30 million of its Huobi Tokens into building a Huobi public chain, Huobi announced on Wednesday at a press conference in Singapore.

The fund, currently worth around USD166 million based on CoinMarketCap data, will be used to launch the Huobi Chain Project (HCP).

Huobi will also continue investing in HCP with a percentage of its yearly income which has not been revealed yet.

“In the new world, we will need new financial infrastructure. We will no longer need to depend on centralised exchanges, but move to a decentralised financial hub instead,” Huobi project director Gordon Chen said.

In 16 months’ time, Huobi aims to let the mainnet go live.

In the long term, it envisions a next-generation decentralised financial platform.

Chen told Block Asia, “We don’t see it as a one shot transition. The actual exchange moving onto the chain will be slower because of issues like speed, security, and regulations.

“As chain technology matures and the world adopts it, a new balance in the industry will be achieved, and then it might become feasible.”

Gordon Chen speaking at a press conference in Singapore on 6 June.

Back in March, Huobi’s main rival Binance also said it was planning to move towards a decentralized system of operations.

Chen said, “Right now we are open and transparent about it, and we give out the most details about it, like how and when. We are open so we can drive community adoption. Is that going to give us an advantage against our competitors? I think it very well is.”

LOOKING FOR SUPERHEROES

Huobi launched the Huobi Chain Superhero Championship Program (HCSCP) along with HCP, where it invites teams of blockchain developers around the world to be “superheroes” and join the development of Huobi chain.

It is part of its plan to open-source the development of Huobi Chain every step of the way. Teams from around the world can participate and compete for the prize pool.

Chen said, “You get to accomplish something extraordinary and make history, and get huge monetary rewards while doing so.

“Most importantly, this educates the next generation of blockchain developers and help them get a ton of new ideas.”

The development of Huobi Chain is divided into ten milestones. New teams can join the contest at any milestone, and they can build on the open-sourced code from previous milestones.

DARING

HCP is an ambitious project, which Huobi calls a “global scale social experiment”.

Chen discussed the challenges that Huobi will be facing along the way with Block Asia, “So far no one has succeeded with the transition from centralised governance to full community governance.”

That is the ultimate blockchain dream of democratisation and power to the people. Chen added, “It’s about human nature. Can full decentralisation be realised? I think there needs to be some kind of balance, so we see that as an experiment.”